Approaching

IF LIFE teaches us anything, it’s that at its core, life is a competition. A competition to survive and reproduce. And in the animal kingdom, that exists as the competition to secure mates.

And like it or not, humans are part of the competition.

It’s easy to forget that, when you cast aside politics, science, medicine, literature, art, sociology and philosophy, at our core, we are still animals. Our insecurities, relationships, dreams, fears, and ambitions might all be enormously complex, but our behavior, the very patterns of our existence, when looked at from outside, are incredibly simple, and incredibly indistinct from the lives of almost all other animals.

We seek food. We seek shelter. We seek a mate.

That is what we do, just as every other animal does. And in fact, so essential are these needs, that until they’re all met, it’s hard to think about anything else. Just imagine when you were last extremely hungry or being battered by the weather? What else did you think of other than a hot meal or roof over your head? Didn’t all those “human concerns” just seem to fade away? And, well, I doubt you’d have much interest in a site largely dedicated to dating and self-improvement if your sex life wasn’t a concern.

Before we’re humans, we’re just animals.

And like any other animals, we’re in direct competition with one another to mate and reproduce. And the fear that that is born from this competition, from this demand of our animal psyche, is one that affects our lives in fundamental ways that manipulate and control almost every decision we make.

THE THREE FEARS

If you’re living in the western world, then the fear and immediate threat of death is not really an issue. Supermarkets, housing and over the counter medicines have all but eliminated the issue of death from our existence. Nothing’s hunting us, nothing’s stealing our food and nothing’s destroying our homes. We simply sit at home, and in one way or another, try to solve the problem of how we are going to mate with another person.

I say mate because even though the vast majority of people (guys included) think of this as love and companionship, from an animal perspective, it’s still just finding a mate.

And when it comes it finding a mate, humans do this like any other animal. By using a dominance hierarchy. The more dominant an individual is, whether that be for beauty, achievement, or anything else, the more likely that individual is to mate. Now, I’m not saying for a second that this is the be all and end all of human mating – It is, thanks largely to women*, far more complex than this – but the reality of this dominance hierarchy is something that for the most part exists, and is something that our brain is definitely, definitely aware of.

With our survival taken care of, all we’re left with is the competition to secure a mate. And it is that competition that instills in us three very basic fears:

Fear of yourself

Fear of the same sex

Fear of the opposite sex

We fear ourselves because we fear we might not be able to compete. We fear the same sex because we fear they might outcompete us. And we fear the opposite sex because they might reject us.

No matter if you’re a guy or a girl, at some point you’ve sat there and thought – “I’m not good enough”, “I’m not as attractive as her”. “I’m not as strong as him” or my personal favorite “she wouldn’t like me anyway”.

These are fears that we are exposed to day in and day out. But rather than identify these as animal fears, we typically label them as:

But this is missing the full picture. We fear failure because it means we’ll be lower down the hierarchy of mates. We fear inadequacy because it means we can’t and won’t ever be able to compete. We fear confrontation because it means we might end up being proven to be lower down the hierarchy than a potential rival. We fear rejection because, well, it means we’re shit out of luck with that mating prospect.

It is for this reason that we don’t attempt our dreams and procrastinate. It is for this reason that our self-esteem sucks. It is for this reason that we don’t assert our boundaries. It is for this reason that we don’t approach the girl we like.

It’s all connected.

Our fears are far less complex than we realize. They’re all orbiting around one central fear. A question that we’re asking ourselves every day:

“Can I compete?”

BEATING THE COMPETITION

If life is a competition, then we have two options. Compete and reap the rewards, or run away and suffer the consequences. I.e shame and self-loathing.

But the way in which we compete is a little more unique than the animals would have it. Far from chest beating and charging each other till our hooves fall off – engaging in the competition is less about defeating opponents than it is about facing your fears in order to free yourself.

Fear of failure, confrontation and rejection are all dealt with the same way; by consistent, gradual exposure. These are fears that are chipped away at over years, slowly and surely removing us from a prison of fear into a free variety of behavior. We learn to be comfortable with confrontation by slowly asserting our boundaries more often, and doing physical sports like boxing. We learn to be more comfortable with rejection by slowly approaching more and more, and letting ourselves say whatever we want, regardless of the potential outcome.

Fear of inadequacy is dealt with by proving your beliefs wrong. By challenging what you think about yourself and seeing if it actually lines up with reality. The more you expose yourself to the various successes that you are capable of, the more you are building your sense of self-worth on tangible, hard-won achievement. Instead of deciding your result before you try; try and keep trying and see what the result is. Eventually, you’ll win, and over time, you’ll win a lot.

But this is just about overcoming the fears that stem from the inherent conception of life. What about the competition itself? When I say compete, do I literally mean compete with other people?

Well, no, not really. In many ways, that’s an extremely toxic way to live. Not only does almost everyone start becoming a threat, but your entire worldview becomes centered around how others perceive you; specifically how members of the opposite sex perceive you. Your entire focus in life is about maintaining and increasing where they perceive you on your own perceived dominance ladder.

As you can imagine, that’s both wildly insecure and a complete fucking headache.

It also doesn’t really make sense, as there are numerous metrics upon which a person is judged. What are you gonna do, compete on all of them? Good luck with that.

It’s a stupid way to live, and it misses the true power that exists in accepting that life is a competition. If life is a competition, then its inherent demand is that you compete to the best of your ability, that is, that you consistently keep improving yourself. Rather than get lost in a constant race with others, you simply look at yourself and examine where you can do better. You ask yourself “where can I improve?” And then you start doing it. Rather than asking yourself whether you can compete, you assume you can, and ask yourself how you can compete better.

Because once you combine this question with the fears that you are slowly chipping away, competition with anyone else is something you’ll never have to worry about ever again.

*By this I mean, women care far more about how you make them feel than how dominant you are. Realising this is the difference between being a macho dick measurer, and someone who has Game.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

PATRICE O’NEAL was an exceptionally gifted comedian. Referring to his standup as performances, he wouldprefer to improvise what he knew he wanted to talk about, adjusting it based on his own mood and the mood of the audience. As a result, his structure was haphazard and unpredictable, but the authenticity of it built a relationship between himself and the audience; a relationship where they were often at his mercy.

Jerry Seinfeld once said he never looks at the audience, instead preferring to focus on the noises, the rhythm, and sticking to the material he had in this head. Patrice was the opposite; during his standup, he didn’t just look at the audience, he involved them, he held them hostage to the uncomfortable conversations he wanted to have.

It would be easy to look at Patrice and say that his talent lay in his ability to improvise where other comedians would need planned routines; that he was just that funny. But this would miss what gave Patrice his real talent:

His unflinching honesty when it came to what he believed was the truth.

No matter who he was speaking to; man, woman, black, white – he said what he thought, and he said it unashamedly; often calling people out on their hypocrisies and exposing people to parts of themselves they weren’t aware of.

I remember when, in one of his radio appearances, a female writer called in to promote her book on how to train men to be better husbands – a book she based around applying the same techniques used in animal training. Barely seconds on the air, Patrice launched into her, saying:

“Urrrgh – that’s hilarious. Again, automatically I’m gonna tell you what the flaw is in your thinking: you don’t want to be the – the controller. That’s the thing. Women don’t want to win, you want a winner. You don’t want to rule the nest – that’s why you’ve never met a happy woman boss. You don’t wanna be there. You’re angry about being a boss. You want a boss. You want your man to be the leader. This is why it’s already flawed on a prehistoric level. Why – you don’t wanna run your husband. Do you know why running your husband is not sexy? Cause you don’t wanna be there doing it. That’s why it never works for a woman to run things – cause you don’t wanna – you look at your husband like URRRGHH – look at this bum letting me run his life. Phooey. You have a – you just have a loser for man.”

She left the call a few minutes later.

Now, I’m not here to debate the merits of Patrice’s argument (if you really want to know, I agree with him*), I’m just here to explore what it was he was doing. Which, in essence, was staying true to himself no matter what. No matter how uncomfortable, how confrontational, how alienating it was; Patrice stayed true to himself.

Whatever the subject matter. If he had a view, he said it.

In my article on Charisma, I wrote that being okay with potentially being perceived as unlikeable, and actually leaning towards that, was a hallmark of charisma. Instead of trying to please anyone, just shamelessly being yourself and expressing who you are with a take it or leave it attitude was essential.

Nowhere is this truer than in dating.

WHY MEN LIE TO WOMEN

If you’re a woman and you’re reading this, I think I need to reinforce to you the fact that men rarely tell the truth. We want to do it. But we don’t.

Instead, what we do is filter.

A common trait in people struggling with social anxiety is that they will be very conscious of what they say. They will be extremely picky about when they enter a conversation, how they enter a conversation, and acutely sensitive to how what they say will be received. Now, I don’t just mean received after they’ve said it, no, I mean how it will be received before it’s even been said.

They’re like the bad Politician version of themselves. What they say is essentially the pre-packaged, planned, and politically correct version of whatever they actually think – if you’re lucky that is. Usually, it’s just what you want to hear, regardless of what they think.

The reason for this is simple. They want you to like them.

Now you’re probably wondering “yeah that’s great, but what the hell does that have to do with men and women?”

Well with men, they almost always talk to women like they have social anxiety.

In fact, a man who talks freely around women is so rare, it may as well be a myth.

And the logic behind this makes perfect sense. When someone with social anxiety is altering their conversation, it’s to get someone to like them so they aren’t a threat and won’t socially hurt them. When a guy talking to a woman is altering his speech its also because he wants her to like him.

Can you guess why?

What is it that he could possibly want?

Whether you like it or not, a fundamental part of the male-female dynamic is that men want what women have, but women are the gatekeepers for what men want.

Part of the male psyche is always dedicated to winning what we want. Like one of those birds who builds a nest and does a dance, or a silverback who drums his chest the loudest, on some level, our actions are guided by the desire to charm or impress the gatekeeper into giving us what we want.

The problem with this, however, is that it sucks.

When you allow what you want from a woman to dictate all of your behavior, you’re allowing yourself to be driven by your neediness, your shallow baser needs, or your manipulative nature; but worse than this, you’re trading your self-respect for sex. Or in the case of relationships, love too.

Yes. Sex has become more important to you than who you are.

And on any level, relationship or single, placing sex (or love) as more important to you than who you are isn’t just a lack of self-respect, it’s an act of stupidity.*

THE MODERN PLAYER IN SEARCH OF A SOUL

The more you lie to a woman in order to get what you want, the more you aren’t just disrespecting yourself, but through that disrespect, you are making yourself far less likely to get what you want.

And the reason for this is blindingly simple.

You’re unattractive.

And I don’t mean – big nose, bad teeth, small dick unattractive.

No, I mean your soul is unattractive. Who you are is just ugly.

In my article on the Fundamental Characteristics of the Attractive Man, I stated that the only trait that mattered was that a man developed himself, for himself. Not for her. That he built his life around who he is, what he wants, and who he wants to be. He accomplished his potential, he found his enjoyment and he went after goal, after goal, after goal, because that’s exactly what he wanted to do.

But this principle of developing yourself for yourself extends even further, in a way that is so essential it baffles me that I didn’t really expand on it. Here’s what I forgot to emphasize:

When you lie to a woman, you are using your own voice, your own words, your own expression of your identity, not for yourself, but for her.

On a fundamental level, this is the most unattractive thing you can do. It doesn’t matter how much you live for yourself, develop for yourself, and have fun for yourself; if your basic expression of your own identity, in words, is not for you, but for her, then you’re toast. You’re kablooey. Like some kid who acts tough only to come across someone truly aggressive; your attractiveness was an illusion that she will very quickly see through.

Your words are the expression of who you are. Before you do anything else with your life, the words you choose to communicate with, the words you choose to say, and the words you choose to stand by are the clearest representation of who you are, and what you firmly believe. Your words are your soul.

And it’s either attractive or unattractive.

It’s either for you or for her.

KILL THE POLITICIAN

Before you do anything else you have to fix how you speak. You have to start aligning your words with what you actually think and feel.

Not what I think, not what the news thinks, not what your friend thinks, not what will avoid confrontation, not what will get you laid and not what will make you friends, get you a promotion or make your parents love you; you have the say what you think and feel.

You have to find the Politician within your soul, put a .44 Magnum to his head, and blow his brains right across your frontal cortex until there’s nothing but your unfiltered voice blasting out like a guitar solo.

Now, this might sound complicated, but it’s the method is actually very simple.

You get in touch with who you are.

You have to take the risk and just say it.

But as step one requires being traumatized, falling in love, breaking up, reading, questioning your values and all the gold of living that you naturally will have experienced to some degree already, I’m just going to say this:

The easiest way to start understanding who you already are and what you think and feel and believe is to start writing all of it down and exploring it. Get to know yourself by confronting yourself, and supplement that with the writing of people who have also done this; Freud, Tolstoy, Rousseau, Eliot, Levi, Frankl, Emerson, Dostoyevsky, Thoreau, Twain, Nietzsche, Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Schopenhauer, Jung, and pretty much anyone whose writing has stood the test of time.

Because that’s what good writing is; identity – distilled and perfected. The more you do this, the more you will figure out the essentials of who you are. The only tonic that works better is trauma, and that’ll show up when it shows up. Just strap in and enjoy the ride.

Now let’s move on to 2) You have to take the risk and just say it.

I know countless people that practice meditation who are completely out of touch with their identity and words. They have almost nothing to say, and if you ask them any penetrating questions about themselves, they sit there with this airy look about them, eyes glazed over like a caught fish – what do they sit there doing? Have they attempted to think about nothing for so long that they’ve emptied their brain of all their merit as well?

God knows.

The reason I find this ironic is that the single greatest way to murder your Politician is to develop presence. When you develop presence (read: the awareness of what is happening right now and what you are doing right now) you develop the ability to spot your own bullshit, and when you’re faking your own identity – i.e saying stuff to appease your boss, women, make friends – instead of saying what you actually think.

The more you learn to spot when you’re not saying what you think, the more you can start pulling the trigger and start saying what you actually think.

This is best represented by looking at the conventional patterns of behavior, and how they fit into your life and automatic behavioral patterns.

Friendliness, being nice, being agreeable, being a gentleman, being confrontational, expressing displeasure, expressing annoyance, silence, hatred, anger, sadness, laughing at misfortune, taking pity on someone’s misfortune; all of these are examples of typical patterns of your own behavior.

But here’s how it needs to work:

Don’t be friendly unless you want to. Sometimes, you’re gonna feel like annoyed, irritated, you’ll want to be alone. The same goes for being nice. You don’t have to be nice if you don’t feel nice; if someone’s fucked you off, tell them.

Don’t be agreeable unless you genuinely agree or get on with the person. This one is essential. If you don’t enjoy their company, if you don’t agree with what they’re saying, if you think they’re wrong, say it and voice your opinion. Yes this will be confrontational, yes this might mean you’re in the wrong sometimes, but yes this the absolute right thing to do. Back your own opinion.

Don’t be a gentleman unless you want to. Big shock but not every woman deserves to have the door held open for her. Hell, some deserve to have it slammed shut on their way out.

Be confrontational. If your opinion, beliefs, and values come into conflict with someone else’s and you don’t say or do something – why the fuck are you even alive? Why are you the spectator of your own life?

The same goes with displeasure, annoyance, silence, anger, hatred, black humor, empathy – if they are real within you, then you need to start expressing them. Don’t hold them back.

In other words: Never lie. Never pretend.

Because the more you learn to align your voice and actions with your soul, the stronger it becomes.

This is the pumping iron of spiritual strength. And when you’ve backed who you are long enough, and developed an identity, a will, and a soul that is robust and honest – then you’ve developed a strength that nobody can fake, and nobody can take away.

This is taking responsibility for your own inner strength and worth – your own personal power.

And in seizing your personal power, you’ve made the most attractive decision you can ever make.

*I’ve met many individuals who claim they’d be happy with this. But I’ve never met a woman who actually was.

*This is far from something I just see in single guys. No, I see this in guys in relationships even more. Because those guys aren’t just worrying about sex, they’re worrying about love as well. If neither of those needs is in a healthy place within you, then you’re sending the Politician to talk to your partner so much that you start to morph into the Politician.

I can’t think of a single guy I know who isn’t like this with their partner.

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

KOJIRŌ SASAKI stood on the beach waiting for his opponent. He looked out along the shore, and across the rolling waves, but there was no sign. He had waited for hours; they had all waited for hours.

The year was 1612 and the location was Ganryu island, located off the coast of the Bizen Province in Japan. Sasaki was a masterful swordsman, who eschewed the traditional katana in favor of a ‘No-Dachi’; a long and heavy two-handed sword considered by most to be too cumbersome to be effective. But despite its length and weight, Sasaki wielded the sword with incredible speed, accuracy, and grace; basing his strikes off of a swallows tail in flight.

He had fought many duals before, and he had never lost. That’s why they called him ‘The Demon of the Western Provinces.’

His opponent was a man named Musashi Miyamoto. A vagabond and Ronin, Musashi was known for his heavy drinking, his unkempt appearance, and his flagrant disregard for the conventions of the Samurai. Despite this, he, like Sasaki, was rumored to have fought many duels and never have lost.

For each man, the other was to be his greatest opponent. Yet Musashi was nowhere to be seen.

Stood on the beach, surrounded by officials and the noise of the ocean, Sasaki began to wonder. At the very least this was a sign of disrespect, at the worst it was a sign of cowardice and his opponent had fled.

As if to confirm his suspicion, the officials around him began to whisper to one another. “Perhaps he has fled.” “Yes, he has run away in fear!” They said.

Sasaki wondered. Perhaps he had fled.

———

A few miles south of the beach, in a small inlet, a fisherman sat in his dingy. The sun was hot but wasn’t a bother. He had been paid handsomely by his passenger; a strange, disheveled looking man who sat hunched over at the end of the boat. The man, who as was usual for him, was hungover, wiped the sweat from his brow stared up at the sun, then grinned at the fisherman. Almost in contrast to his unconventional appearance, he looked happy.

Reaching down into the belly of the dingy, the man picked up a spare oar, and drawing a knife from his belt began to carve strips of wood from it. After some time and many blade-strokes, the belly of the dingy had been filled with shavings and the oar was long and curved in a smooth angle like a katana. The man smiled at his work.

“Let’s go.” He said.

Musashi Miyamoto had woken up drunk that day, and spent most of his journey to the island passed out; but his strange appearance and lateness were not accidents or flaws of character, but rather his strategy itself. Having won his first duel at the age of 13, Musashi was no stranger to combat and was something of an expert at killing samurai. Over the course of his life, he had fought in wars, killed entire dojos, and traveled far, killing famous, notable warriors; all whilst being a masterless Ronin himself.

Killing samurai wasn’t just what he did, it was what he was. Not only did he know their techniques, but he also understood their code and culture. He knew how to get under their skin.

———

It was some hours into the afternoon when Sasaki spotted the boat on the horizon. Stepping forward and shading his eyes from the sun one of his officials shrieked “It’s him! It’s Miyamoto”, which sent all the officials running back and forth, flocking to and fro from Sasaki, unsure of what to do.

Grabbing the nearest man, Sasaki looked into his stunned eyes and said “My sword.” The man stared, mouth agape then fled up the shore to a small hut, shouted at a peasant woman, then hurried back carrying a large, sheathed weapon. Sasaki took it from him and securing the sheath and hilt in each palm strode down the beach towards the shoreline.

The boat was parked just offshore, in the shallow water. A small fisherman sat in the back, fixing a wide-brimmed straw hat to his head, and in the front, a ragged looking man cut the final touches on a large wooden carving, then sprang from the boat into the knee-high water.

The man waded to the shore, drenched from the knee down, and once free of the water stopped a few up the beach to brush the sand from his feet. Saski walked forward and took in his appearance. His clothes looked like they’d be worn for days. His face was pockmarked and unshaven. But it was his gaze that affronted Sasaki most. Behind his serious composure, the man’s eyes seemed to say “Oh, so this is Sasaki – Well, what of it?”

Sasaki’s face was a carved stone, and his eyes did not blink. The two men stared at each other for some time, until an official ran between the two, followed the flock. “Miyamoto,” he said, and Mushashi nodded. The officials all stared, and their heads turned between the two, back and forth, waiting for some kind of movement. Some were stunned, some were scared, and all of them standing on edge.

Striding forward, Sasaki gripped the hilt of his sword, adopted his footing (never too wide, never too short, with his feet loose and agile), and drawing the katana from its sheath, tossed the scabbard onto the sand.

Musashi looked at the sheath, then him, and with a new wildness in his eyes said: “if you have no use for your sheath, you are already dead.”

But Sasaki heard nothing. His hands did not tremble, his body did not move. His pulse was steady, his breathing was rhythmic. This, he had practiced. He was Sasaki Kojiro and he had never lost a duel. He knew this from experience, from what others told him, and from what he told himself in comfort, whenever he felt pangs of doubt or moral discomfort. He was Sasaki Kojiro, victory was as certain as it ever was, as it always was, not simply for the work and achievement he had so far accrued, but because of the being that he knew he was in relation to other men. The knowledge of his superiority to other men and his habitual expectation of their deference was why, despite his outward and internal physical calm, his mind blazed with fury. He was Sasaki Kojiro, and here was his opponent; a filthy, unkempt man who kept him waiting and arrived carrying a piece of wood. To any Samurai this would be a mark of dishonor, but to Sasaki, this was a disgrace.

Musashi stepped forward and their eyes met. He raised his weapon, an enormously long carved wooden oar, as long, if not longer than Sasaki’s own No-Dachi. His internal state was hidden, Sasaki detected that much, but his stance was fine, comfortable and confident; all the details of his body, his expression and the position of his sword spoke clearly; disgrace or no, Sasaki knew, as any master of a profession knows, that he was in the company of a man equal in his craft. Sasaki stepped forward, Musashi back; it seemed he too, had come to the same conclusion.

The officials gasped and sprang back. Many who were friends of Sasaki said nothing and simply stood horror-struck, tearing at their beards. A few seagulls had flown down to the shallow water, bobbing like boats, to watch the proceedings. All were silent, save for a young boy who at a slight movement from Sasaki burst into tears and fled towards the trees.

Sasaki felt calm now. His body was relaxed, but his grip was firm. His eyes, locked on Musashi, felt like dew drops. There was little sensation in him except for his breathing; but behind it, there was a disgust that was held for Musashi. He cared little for him and wanted to disgrace him by killing him on the beach.

A wave crashed and Sasaki struck a swift blow, Musashi moved and lashed out with his oar. “Ah ha!” Sasaki thought to himself, “that was the fatal strike!” Sasaki moved forward towards the sand. “He is defeated!” But there was a glare in his eyes, and he thought “What is this?” And could not recall where he was and what had occurred. “Yes, this is the beach.” He thought. Then, lying on his back in the sand, he grew tired, cared nothing for fighting, and forgot about that and everything else, and only wished for the sun to leave his sight.

— — —

Musashi Miyamoto stood above his opponent, watching him die. The officials were half-mad, some screaming and others stooping over to look at Sasaki.

Musashi, still trembling with nerves, felt great unease at how important the man had seemed only a few seconds earlier, only now to die peacefully on the sand, with a childlike smile on his face that was quite detached from the reality of everything that had occurred. He couldn’t help but think the man was quite beautiful, and he had destroyed something beautiful for no reason at all. He wished he could end all of this nonsense, wake the man up and talk to him. Instead, the man slowly stopped breathing, as the blood pooled around his chest.

Musashi felt a pang of sadness. Here was one of the greatest swordsman that ever lived, and now he was dead, and that was that. Musashi looked at him and bowed, then, leaving the officials with the body, he turned and marched down the beach, through the waves, and climbed back onto the boat. Some of the officials who loved Sasaki ran down the beach into the surf after him, swinging katanas and shouting, but it was too late, the tide had gone out and Musashi had gone.

— — —

Musashi Miyamoto* had fought in countless duels, but it would be this one that would change his life. Self-taught from a young age, Musashi had his first duel at the age of 13, where he struck down a Samurai. Continuing on to fight in wars and dueling, Mushashi came to know everything there was to know about combat, going so far as to develop his own style; which ignored most of the accepted teachings at the time, and was based largely on efficiency and practicality, removing all flowery movements.

Later in his life, he retired to a cave and would go on to write his treatise on life and strategy called “The Book of the Five Rings”, as well as his “Dokkodo”; his 21 rules for a disciplined life. Remembered mostly for his incredible fighting ability and for the wisdom of his later writings – Musashi has always struck me as a fascinating figure, not so much for what he accomplished, but because of the principles that allowed him to accomplish it. He’s a man who sought complete perfection in what he did, but at the same time completely spat in the face of the accepted culture of his time.

There are many lessons to learn from Musashi, but I believe it is these principles that serve to teach us the best lessons. Not just on achievement, but on living itself.

Here are the lessons of Musashi Miyamoto.

YOU’RE GOING ABOUT LEARNING IN ALL THE WRONG WAYS

It’s easy to think that in our desire to acquire mastery of a skill we have to rigorously adhere to the way of mastery that has gone before us. We ask “how do I write a book?”, “how do I start a business?”, “how do I have good relationships?” and we search and consume information that we believe will show us the way to master and achieve these various goals.

But in many cases, this is failing before we’ve even begun.

In many cases, there is no way, there’s only your way.

Musashi defeated every opponent he came across. No matter how much they trained, no matter which style they’d mastered, no matter how many people they’d beaten; they all lost.

Yet Musashi never had a master or even a formal style. He taught himself. In his own words:

“You can win with a long weapon, and yet you can also win with a short weapon. In short, the Way of the Ichi school is the spirit of winning, whatever the weapon and whatever its size.”

A Ronin from a young age, Musashi was forced (or rather, compelled) to wander through life figuring everything out for himself. His approach was unconventional from the outset, and in many ways seems to have been set in tone from his first duel, when, at the age of 13, he defeated a master samurai using the man’s own short sword and a wooden pole.

Because he taught himself, Musashi didn’t have a fighting style that was particular to anyone else; in fact, he invented his own. It’s a style that’s best captured in his own words: “I practice many arts and abilities — all things with no teacher”

Musashi approached the craft of fighting from a place of reality. Taught entirely through his own real-world experience and ruthless desire for perfection, Musashi was quick to disregard many of the accepted practices of other fighting styles – considering many of their movements unnecessary, impractical, and serving only to impress onlookers. Instead, his style was quick and efficient, utilizing both hands and simple, practical movements. The clearest embodiment of this was his choice to weird two swords, instead of one.

When we’re attempting something new we almost inevitably come to a head-on collision with our fear of failure. We feel constrained or withheld, we avoid and procrastinate, and we doubt and deny our ability. This is normal, hell I feel it every day, but it also causes us to look for ways to circumvent our fear and find a path towards our goal that will make us feel safe.

Like a guide, a teacher, or a master.

But if we stop for a moment, and really consider the skill we are trying to achieve, how often can the skill we desire not be learned with common sense? Is writing a book really that complicated? Is starting a business truly that confusing? Is having good relationships really a mystery?

Or are you just scared you’ll fail and not sitting down and using your own imagination and problem-solving abilities?

Musashi is an example I always return to when I think of self-trust. When I want to try something frightening and doubt myself, I always think:

How can I solve this problem?

What do I need to achieve in order to solve this?

What do I need to do in order to achieve that?

What do I need to learn in order to do that?

What is the best way to learn this?

Is there any reason I can’t learn this by action and reflection?

Will I learn more by teaching myself than by having anyone else teach me?

This is nothing new. Experience has long been touted as the best teacher, and I’m not here to say anything different. What I’m suggesting is that when fear strikes, and you begin to doubt your ability to do this on your own; fight doubt with doubt. Doubt your reasoning up until now and instead break down the problem you’re confronted with. Engage your brain and figure out solutions for yourself. Because it’s going to force you to come to the conclusion you’re desperately trying to avoid:

That you need to take action. You need to try.

Instead of reading how-to guides, your attempt to write a book becomes a process that evolves as you write the book. Instead of going to seminars and taking lessons on entrepreneurship, you start building a useful product that you can either pitch to investors or start selling. Instead of reading blogs on the internet on how to have good relationships, you go outside and start talking to girls, getting rejected and learning from it.

Because in doing so, you don’t learn someone else’s way, you learn your way. And that’s something nobody else knows and nobody else can teach, and the world has never seen before.

STOP LOOKING FOR SUCCESS IN ALL THE WRONG PLACES

I imagine that after killing Sasaki, the greatest rival of his age, Musashi looked upon his dying opponent and wondered why it was that instead of feeling happiness, he felt only sadness. He was finally the greatest fighter of his age, but instead of feeling joy, he felt only the sadness that he had killed this warrior for no reason at all.

It’s been noted that this was the moment Musashi refused to kill in duels ever again but I would imagine it was also the genesis of what he came to express later in life:

“There is nothing outside of yourself that can ever enable you to get better, stronger, richer, quicker, or smarter. Everything is within. Everything exists. Seek nothing outside yourself.”

Everything is within. Seek nothing outside yourself.

A product of his age and ambition, Musashi was a killer, but he was not a psychopath. He came to realize that despite achieving what he’d wanted to achieve, it did not bring him anything he wanted, it only came with the cost of a great man’s life. Something he ultimately did not want.

Although a dramatic example, it taught him the example he needed; we cannot find what we want outside of ourselves without first finding it inside. For him, this was satisfaction that came from dueling, but for yourself, it might be a sense of importance from fame, a sense a manliness from having a lot of sex, a sense of superiority through becoming successful – all of this isn’t going to work. You’ll just end up like Musashi, wondering where the feeling you thought you’d have has gone. If you don’t already have it internally, you’ll never find it.

You have to change how you feel inside. Nothing else will work.

I believe this is why a lot of guys I know continually find themselves chasing women. They believe that aside from the satisfaction of getting laid, they’ll feel a sense of internal fulfillment; but when they do finally get laid, they never feel this sense of fulfillment, and instead of questioning this, they simply chase the next girl hoping she will be the one do it for them. They crave more, thinking that will solve their problem rather than confronting the problem itself.

I see this with sex, money, success; any form of material ambition that once achieved doesn’t live up to what we think it would. We either reevaluate or we chase more.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the same people who chase more, only to feel nothing, often end up spouting nihilistic beliefs. They looked for meaning outside of themselves. And as Musashi says “there is nothing outside yourself.” When you’ve lived a life finding nothing, you start beginning to believe life is meaningless.

This perspective is often the most challenging to take on because it directly confronts our ego. But ultimately that is the choice. We have to let it go, or let it win. We have to keep feeding it externally, or instead look internally, and find what we were always searching for in the first place.

THE COMPOUNDING OF SHITTY LIFE CHOICES ™

One of the most harmless ways to ruin your life is to waste your time on pointless crap. At the time, it might seem like you’re enjoying yourself, but as these small moments of waste pile up and compound on each other, suddenly it’s 5 years later, and you’ve spent nearly a quarter of your life staring at a smartphone. It’s moments like this that make people wonder where their youth went, and why they can’t seem to achieve their dreams, or even worse, never did at all.

Aristotle said that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.” The way we use our time then determines the person that we are. And when we use our time poorly, this poor use of time compounds and grows until years have passed and we are no longer a person we ever wanted to be.

Queue the panic attack and mid-life crisis.

I call this the Compounding of Shitty Life Choices™ and it’s acting on you every day. It’s acting on you right now. Each time you take an action which is poorly chosen, worthless or completely negative, this adds to the pile of shitty actions you’ve already taken, stored away in your life like a bank vault of fuckups. And like a bank, you get interested on this in the form of the resulting poor self-esteem.

And the more you add, the more it grows; and the more it grows, the more you hate yourself.

This brings me to two quotes I’ve always liked by Musashi:

“Do nothing which is of no use.” And “Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.”

The first is probably my favorite, exceptionally brutal qualifier on how we spend our time. Once it’s in your brain, it sticks like a virus and questions “is this useful?”, and then if it isn’t “why are you doing this? What could you be doing instead?”

When we orientate our lives into useful activity, our choices compound into massive results that are massively useful; like a book, a business, or a good relationship. When we orientate our behavior into useful activity, we actively medicate ourselves against the ever building effects of the Compounding of Shitty Life Choices™.

When we get all stuffy and bogged down with crap, all it takes is one useful decision to start setting it right. And when we start building the habit of doing that every day, we’re not just setting our days right, we’re setting our lives right.

This is not to say that things like playing video games and watching youtube videos are something you should never do. Fun is useful after all, it just comes down to moderating excess, knowing whether your actions are truly making you happy,and being conscious of how you are spending your time. If all of your actions are like water that spills into either one of two cups, a good choices cup, and a bad choices cup, make sure the majority of your actions flow into the former, so that at the end of the day, it’s as close to the brim as you could get it.

Try it and see if you aren’t satisfied.

Musashi’s second quote is a useful reminder and antidote to the ever-present and ever negative berating of self-esteem.

“Today is a victory over yourself of yesterday.”

It’s easy when we’ve consistently failed to develop ourselves to get caught in patterns of negative self-talk where we endlessly reinforce an idea of who we are (usually, that we suck), telling ourselves that we cannot achieve what we want to achieve because not only have we failed but that we are a failure.

Sometimes, the argument can seem pretty convincing.

But just because you’ve failed in the past doesn’t mean you are a failure, it just means you need to do something different today. You need to take a different action to the one that resulted in failure. You need to start the day anew and try something new. And then you need to do that tomorrow. And the day after that. And the day after that, until finally, you are that ‘something new.’

Don’t get hung up on the past. Defeat the past.

*In Japanese, the last name is typically said first, so the correct way to say his name would be Miyamoto Musashi, although, as I’m writing in English I felt it better to stick to English conventions. The same can be said for Sasaki Kojiro.

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If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

IF YOUR LIFE is anything like mine, then somewhere between the waking up; showering; taking a dump; masturbating; singing; watching youtube videos of cats; watching youtube videos with a cat; wondering what it would be like if your bus smashed into someone; reading a book; browsing the internet and feeling guilty about not reading a book; being late for work; waiting for the day to end; replying to a message in the group chat only to start an argument; approaching that girl in the supermarket; getting too nervous to approach that girl in the supermarket; chastising yourself for being a pussy; arguing with your manager; arguing with your manager’s manager; going to bed on time because you’re content; going to bed too late because you fundamentally dislike yourself; writing something worthwhile; writing something that’s a complete load of shit; checking your website stats; or measuring your penis, it’s incredibly easy to lose track of your day.

And if you lose track of your day. You lose track of your week. And if you lose track of your week, then that starts to add up exponentially and all of a sudden you realize you haven’t done anything worthwhile in a hell of a lot of time, and your mother was right when she told you that you were a loser.

In order to keep track of a life that is going to get away from you, it pays to have a measure of just what exactly you’ve driven forward.

Human willpower is about as sturdy as a three legged chair. The more we exert ourselves, the less we end up having, and the less we have, the more we fall prey to making decisions that we do not truly wish to make. And far from willpower being something we can realistically train throughout our weeks, more often than not, the simple nature of the routine in our lives often causes it to deplete on mundane tasks.

The reality of willpower is this:

Through the simple act of being swamped by your day to day routine, you are going to run out of willpower, and you are going to make decisions that are contrary to your goals and interests.

Just as it pays to recognize the limits of your willpower and take steps to expand those limits, it also pays to recognize that those limits are going to defeat you more often than not, and you are going to suffer as a result. Just as you cannot go to the gym for the first time and lift the biggest weight on the rack, you cannot hope to force your mind into a state where it will be able to perform feats of incredible force of will. The training takes time, and again, as with the gym, if you over-train, you will see set backs and more failure.

This may seem fairly straight forward and obvious – but the problem is that when we want to improve our lives, our happiness is often tied to metrics of how much we have improved, and because our happiness is so deeply tied to that improvement, we measure our performance on a day by day basis based on how much we’ve improved. This leads us, inevitably, to notice how much we’re not improving, and exert more willpower in the effort to improve.

Which, as I’ve mentioned above, more often than not leaves us in a place where improvement is unlikely.

It’s a process that we all engage in, and it’s a process that cripples our effectiveness.

The trick then is to break the process.

And we do this by addressing what causes us to expend our willpower. That being the way in which we choose to view our own progress.

I can’t remember who it was, but in a book about success (one of the many I’ve swallowed), some guy said that he reviewed his week, every week, and he credited his success to this. An idea I liked at the time, but one that never caught on, this is something that lingered in the back of my mind ever since.

The idea is a simple one, but one that can be deeply tied to our self-image. As I wrote above, when we desire improvement, all we notice is when we aren’t improving, and this leads us to pursue and expend excessive effort from a state of neuroticism. In other words, when you hate yourself, you treat yourself badly. When our foundation for improvement is flawed, so too will all of our efforts; and the longer we engage with flawed efforts, the more they will compound upon each other, corrupt our motivation, and sink our dreams.

I propose another idea. Look at where you’ve moved your life forward. Maybe this week. Maybe this day. Just look for where you’ve moved it forward. In any way shape or form. Look for where you’ve moved it forward.

Instead of being lost in a race against who you no longer wish to be, or what you’re trying to escape from – look at where you’ve moved your life forward. Maybe this week. Maybe this day. Just look for where you’ve moved it forward. In any way shape or form. It doesn’t have to be a success, it doesn’t have to be some ringing achievement, it just has to be some kind of forward movement of any measure. Because cumulatively, over any period of time, any movement, of any size, adds up to a bigger movement.

And in any form of ambition, whether that be specific or an emotion change within you, it is the movement that constitutes the distance gained.

But right now, I’m sure you thinking, that’s all well and good, but what if I haven’t moved my life forward in anyway. Not today, not last week. Not ever.

Uh, okay? Who cares? Move it forward now. Move it forward tomorrow. Just move it forward in whatever way you can. Just do something, anything, other than giving yourself shit. After all, is dragging yourself down and beating yourself up internally not a step backward? Is it not a destruction rather than a construction?

Because at the heart of it, any forward movement is an action you’ve taken towards building something new.

Maybe you want to be more social; maybe you want to get a better work ethic; maybe you want to have a better dating life; maybe you want to be better at guitar; maybe you just want to get better at being proud of yourself. Whatever it is, within that desire, is a tiny, microscopic improvement you can make on a daily basis, that in some way, will move you forward; will move your life forward.

You could do something as small as saying something nice to a friend. You could do something as small as saying hi to a colleague you haven’t spoken to. You could do something as small as not looking at your phone for 30 minutes; focusing on work for 20; read a few pages of a book; ask a girl for directions; tell a girl she looks great; spend 10 minutes practicing a guitar riff; read some music theory; or just sit down and take a moment to figure out what your values are in life.

Y’know, important stuff.

Because within any goal, there are tiny steps of progress. And all you have to do is take them, and recognize that you’re achieving movement.

When we fail to accurately measure our lives, we become neurotic about our progress and exert unnecessary, excessive effort in an attempt to accelerate our progress. This results in us losing control of our will, and falling into poor routine and poor decision making.

This all stems from our sights being on the win that we want, rather than the steps what we’re taking. But it is only the steps that get us there. The steps we take are the vehicle that carries us the distance. In other words, the steps are the win.

When we learn to measure our lives by the movements we have taken, we learn to keep our actions in the present, consciously advance our lives in realistic ways, and prevent ourselves from falling into neuroticism. Because at its core, measuring our lives accurately comes from a place of self-acceptance, not self-hatred.

Isn’t that foundation you’d rather build from?

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

THE LONGER YOU PURSUE or try to generate motivation within yourself, the longer you will fall prey to what is already motivating you, and consequently, never change the actions you take. Just as a sailor must harness the direction and force of the wind in order to get to his destination, so too must we learn to harness our own innate pre-existing motivations or we will be blown off course.

It seems like there is an enormous, never ending patch of internet real estate devoted entirely to useless advice on motivation. Ranging from “never give up” platitudes on persistence to echoed sentiments of “you choose your own destiny”; motivation is treated like something that we can learn; a skill that we can obtain.

This, of course, means that when we’re lacking in motivation, it’s due to our lack of will, ambition, drive or discipline. In short, when we’re lacking in motivation it means that we are lacking in strength of character. This position, the most commonly held by people, is the most persuasive. Chiefly because of how it allows us to self-aggrandise when we’re doing well, but also, more sinisterly, it allows us to indulge in our feelings of worthlessness when we’re lacking motivation. We agree with this reasoning of motivation because it agrees with how we feel about ourselves.

But consider your life. How often have you willed yourself into a state of motivation, and how often has motivation arrived on its own, generated from a place within you that you have entirely no say over? How often have you turned motivation into a skill, and how often have you simply been at the whims of varying motivations throughout your day, that arrive and depart of their own accord?

If you’re anything like me, then motivation shows up whenever it wants to and has little to do with your own determination. Motivation isn’t something we learn or generate but in fact, something that is already there, and already motivating us.

When we pursue and identify with a goal, and then lack the motivation to pursue it, we often fail to realize that our lack of motivation doesn’t stem from laziness or lack of discipline, but often because we are already motivated to pursue something else that is contrary to our goal. And the longer we fail to identify and understand this motivation, the longer we are susceptible to its influence, and condemn ourselves to move away from what we want.

I spend a lot of my time writing. I consider it my dream to become a novelist. To write well structured, emotionally engaging, dramatically memorable stories is something I’ve wanted for the last 6 years of my life. I would consider myself very motivated to write. I write on this blog, I read innumerable amounts of fiction, and have spent countless hours thinking about structure, plot, and character; yet I have scarcely taken any large strides towards my goal of becoming a novelist.

I have ideas, I have characters, plots, scenes, structures, acts, moments, images, descriptions; I have, at the point of writing this, at least three clearly outlined novels in my head. Yet still, they go unwritten. Despite my motivation to pursue writing, of which this blog is a testament, whenever I approach the craft of fiction, I shy away even though the pursuit of writing fiction is what I am so motivated to pursue.

So why don’t I write?

Because I believe that I don’t know what I’m doing, and because I’m scared that my stories, once written, will reveal me as someone who fundamentally isn’t a novelist. And for someone who is actively invested within his identity with the idea of being a writer; this would be intolerable. This would be painful.

And it’s a contradiction.

Just as I am motivated to change (through the act of becoming) the novelist that I believe I am, I am even more motivated to not pursue that change as it threatens the identity that I am possibly a novelist. My motivation lies more in enjoying my idea of myself than it does the reality of what I want my life to be.

But this contradiction doesn’t just stop at writing.

When I was younger and looking to improve my dating life, I decided I wanted to approach girls during the day and I considered myself extremely motivated and driven to do so. I would go out, I would dedicate time to figuring out what I wanted to say, wear, do, act, and where I would go about doing this. But strangely, once I’d arrived, I was never really motivated to do so. The tricks that I’d learned – getting myself in state, desensitising myself, and visualising my goal – never seemed to work, and instead, all I seemed to notice was how fucking weird it is to approach people during the day, and that everyone would see, and that I was a social reject.

Needless to say, I rarely approached. And far from just being during the day, this reluctance extended into meeting girls at night. It was something I didn’t want to be seen doing, and no amount of generated motivation could change that.

Because, as with the writing, I was already motivated. Rather than being motivated to change my dating life, what I was motivated by was something far different. And as soon as I realized that, everything changed.

When it started looking at my actions and how I went about pursuing my goal, it became apparent to me that I was more than willing to sort myself out and put myself in the necessary environment, and I was even willing to approach. I had no problem with motivating myself to change my life. But when it came to changing my life by approaching girls in front of other people in socially awkward ways, I would always back down. Always.

Preventing social embarrassment wasn’t just my motivation, but changing my life was simply a channel through which I was attempting to prevent myself from being embarrassed, rejected and alone in future. I wanted to change myself into that ‘cool, confident, fearless’ guy I pictured in my head. The one who was the exact opposite of how I felt.

What led me to seek to change my life was exactly the same thing that was preventing me from approaching. I was both propelled and withheld by the same force.

Try that for a mind fuck.

That single motivation – to never feel like I didn’t measure up socially (whether that be with others, friends or romantically) motivated 90% of the decisions I made within my life.Even if the motivations seemed to be contrary, and caused me to take actions against my best interests, the motivations for each were often exactly the same thing.

Understanding that I wasn’t being motivated by a desire to have a better dating life, but instead to protect myself from being alone allowed me to address that fear of aloneness, and address the issues of inadequacy that were shaping my life, and affecting my motivations. And it was no surprise, that upon doing this, my motivations began to fall in line with my desires.

Likewise with writing, understanding that my motivation stemmed from my investment in my idea of who I was allowed me to realize how it was holding me back, and defining the actions I could and couldn’t take. When I was certain about who I was, anything that threatened that certainty was a threat to my very being, and by extension, a threat to my happiness. Letting go of that allowed me to view writing as it is – a craft and a way to enjoy my time.

This is why I look at motivation less as a series of techniques, and less a reflection of our ‘strength of character’ and more as a deeply personal relationship. When we lack motivation in our lives, it’s usually because something is fundamentally wrong, and is being left unaddressed. And rather than addressing it, we usually seek to pile things on top of it and crush it with will power and determination.

Instead, if we treat ourselves with empathy, if we pay attention to the actions we’re taking and ask ourselves ‘why’ our true motivations begin to come to light and we can begin to unearth the contradictions within our lives and our identities. And once we’ve discovered those contradictions, we can begin to work on them.

Because that’s the secret.

Motivation isn’t about forcing ourselves to become who we want to be, it’s about discovering who we actually are.

Liked this article? Help me make an impact, and share it on social media. Just click one of the icons at the bottom or top of the page. Thanks!

If there’s anything in this article you want to go in more depth on, or you just want to get in touch – drop me a message here! It’s completely free.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

It’s not going to happen like you think it will, and it’s sure as shit not going to make you happy.

When we start out trying to change our dating life, what we’re really doing is attempting to upheave our emotional reality and replace it with one that we actually like. We’re trying to take our reflection and replace it with one we enjoy.

And if that sounds miserable, well yeah, it kinda is.

The sad reality about happiness is that when you tie it to a goal, it doesn’t make you happy when you’ve achieved it. It often just makes you end up looking around like someone who’s been given bad directions. However, it is often only upon achieving these goals, that we are freed to realize the goals that we actually value. Y’know, instead of chasing girls, doing something actually worthwhile.

So in an effort to help you give into your temptations, here are a few tips to help you get there even quicker.

1) GETTING ‘GOOD’ AT GAME IS AN EMOTIONAL PROCESS, NOT A LOGICAL ONE

The quicker you come to terms with your neediness, the better and easier your results will be.

When I was younger, I was convinced that ‘game’ was a logical, analytical problem for me to solve. I would view conversations as structured events and sequences rather than interplays of emotion. I would view sexual escalation as something timed and routine rather than something organic and instinctual. I would view lifestyle design as a way for me to bring women into my life, rather than lifestyle design being an extension of my own happiness, and that happiness naturally attracting people. And ultimately, I viewed myself as something to be solved, to be fixed, to be figured out; rather than someone to be understood, empathized with, and brought to life.

I think many guys are like this. They look for the logic in dating; the place to take her, the line to say, the ‘way’ to escalate. They think if they can figure it out then they’ll be fine.

Humans aren’t logical, they’re emotional. Men, in particular, like to believe that they’re free from their emotions, that they’re stoic or present or Zen; but in reality, the people who profess these things are usually the most emotionally influenced of all.

We view dating as a puzzle to be logically solved because we seek to understand what causes us pain. We think if we understand what causes us pain, then we will master it, and we will no longer fear that pain or feel it.

But you can’t out think a feeling, you can just learn to feel it. It’s emotions that got you into this mess, and it’s only emotions that can get you out.

When neediness is destroying our dating lives, the only cure is building a relationship with our neediness; admitting it’s there, feeling it, and learning how to live with and confront that feeling.

When we approach game as a puzzle, we feel neediness and feign confidence. We feel neediness and we drink so we can approach. We feel neediness and we recite our practiced lines, or escalation routines or god knows what else we think we need to do in order to ‘get her’ and placate our emotions. When we feel neediness, we do everything we can to simulate being someone who doesn’t.

But when we confront our neediness itself and build a relationship with who we are; all this stuff takes care of itself*, and stops us letting ourselves be led by our wounds, and instead follow our desire.

The biggest thing echoing in the minds of young guys thinking of how to hit on girls is “how do I not lose her?”. This thought, buried with the network of their minds, continues on repeat, from before the interaction, during it, to well into the relationship itself. When, largely due to that thought, their relationship fails, the young guys then seek to heal their neediness through learning how to “never lose her”.

This ambition manifests itself in the ideal of the player. The guy who never gets rejected. What the young guy doesn’t know, however, is that it’s actually the exact opposite.

The better you are, the more you get rejected.

When you’re starting out, you’re so wrapped up in your neediness that you look for ways to avoid rejection and develop into the fantasy version of yourself that never got hurt like the ‘real’ you did. This is a direct symptom of neediness.

But when you’ve developed as an individual, and let go of the desire to prove something to your neediness*, you’ll actually find yourself starting to invite rejection into your life.

Instead of filtering your personality to that you’re more likable, you express yourself unabashed so that more people dislike you, but the ones that do really do. Instead of thinking of the right time, or the right intensity to express your sexuality, you express it unabashed, so you get shot down more, but you find girls who mirror your sexuality quicker, and start having more sex as a result. And most importantly, instead of looking for the right moment to approach a girl, you just approach, because you’re comfortable with awkward moments, and you’re looking for someone who is too.

It was a bit of a eureka moment when I realized that although my results were going up, I was actually getting rejected a lot more, I was far less controlled and far less suave. My interactions had very little in common except that they occurred with more frequency, and I more frequently got rejected.

But I also more frequently met girls who were really into me. And it’s the exact same for you.

3) THE MORE YOU GET REJECTED, THE BETTER YOU’LL GET

Every rejection is a lesson that success will always fail to teach.

Every technique, tip, advice, motivation, blog post, seminar, youtube video or seance you receive that you hope will improve your dating life are completely and utterly useless without experience.

And you better believe it.

Just as you get better, you’ll get rejected more. The more you get rejected, the better you’ll get. Not only will you learn what kind of girls are attracted to you, what kind of girls you are most compatible with, and you have the most rewarding relationships with; you’ll also learn what about you is most attractive, and what’s unattractive. You’ll learn what ‘techniques’ are bullshit, and what works – you’ll learn what works for you, and what cripples you. You’ll learn what’s universal to every interaction*, and what is just random.

Or in other words, the more you get rejected, the quicker you’ll develop your own style. And then you’ll never need advice ever again.

4) IMPROVE THE ELEMENTS THAT ACTUALLY AFFECT YOUR LIFE

The impact of sex on your life is infinitesimally smaller than the impact of your core relationships, your finances, and your career.

When I was younger, getting laid was the single most important factor of my life. It defined my confidence, how I perceived myself, how I believed others perceived me, and it dictated almost all of my actions; positive and negative. But as I got older, and became more experienced, I began to find that getting laid had little bearing on my happiness. In fact, if I was disappointed in my life, getting laid only seemed to magnify that disappointment. It was yet another factor in my life that couldn’t make me feel better.

An unfortunate reality is that if you’re reading this, it’s more than likely that you attribute far too much importance to having sex. But here’s the thing, sex comes from a happy life, it doesn’t make a life happy. And the more you pursue sex as a resource for your own happiness, the more you’ll cast aside the elements that actually influence that happiness.

Your relationships with your friends, your family, and ultimately, the women you’re romantically involved with, are infinitely more rewarding, engaging, challenging and worthwhile to your happiness than having sex. The closer someone is to you emotionally, the more important this relationship is.

Your financial freedom; sorting your spending habits, paying off debt, saving 20% of your income and investing your money wisely, are infinitely (extremely x 100 infinitely) more important to your happiness than anything you will ever encounter in your life. Especially sex. Because something will go wrong; illness, bereavement, debt or a desire to be free – and financial freedom is the resource for all of these things.

Your career is the largest time investment you will ever have in your life. Choosing how you spend this time, and how engaging and stimulating it is, is enormously important to your happiness. If you have a dream of being a partner at Big 4 accounting firm? Knuckle down. If you want to be a writer? Get typing. If you want to be an actor, singer, chef, scientist, magician or cop – put in the work and consciously make decisions that align your career with your enjoyment. Because as much as you hate to admit it yourself – you won’t be spending 40 hours a week getting laid, you’ll be spending it working. So it may as well be something you can enjoy.

Oh, and of course, let’s not forget your health. Because without it, you’re fucked.

As above, sex comes from a happy life, but it doesn’t make a life happy. The irony of my younger self, and a lot of guys I see out there, is that they overlook the true elements in their lives that are making them unhappy (relationships/social life, finances, career, health) and instead look for sex as a way of getting that happiness; rather than improve those elements, they look to sex, but it’s precisely the improvement of those elements that would make them happier, and as result get laid a hell of a lot more.

5) NOBODY GIVES A SHIT IF YOU HAVE A LOT OF SEX, AND EVENTUALLY, NEITHER WILL YOU

When you imagine yourself as the person you want to be, you often imagine this person with a high level of esteem, envy, and admiration as reactions from other people. As I’ve written before, this is often a, albeit perceived to be, intrinsic element in our goals; the desire for social esteem and status as a result of our achievement. And when we look to improve our dating lives it is no different. Stemming from our desire to feel ..uh… “unrejectable” we are looking to become someone who cannot feel as we do now; socially and romantically irrelevant. But the truth is a little different.

In reality, nobody cares.

Just as we’re caught in the motivational pull of our emotional needs and the demands of our lives and psychological wounds; so is everyone else. Our self-interest isn’t a trait that is unique to us, but in fact ubiquitous to all. As anyone in sales will teach you: nobody cares what you can do, they only care what you can do for them. Whilst you’d probably imagine becoming some great player would mean you’d be the envy of all men, and the swoon of all women; in reality, most of the people you meet won’t really care. People are more concerned with their own lives, and anyone who’s been where you are and moved on knows what kind of place you’re in emotionally

People will either admire you because they’re inexperienced, or they’ll be more concerned with their own happiness, or they’ll pity you.

Yes, pity you.

Because they will realize, as you eventually will, that having sex will never live up to the idea of it that you’ll have in your head. Your ego will be stroked, sure. But behind that ego, will be a sense of disappointment, of emptiness that once again you haven’t been able to make that feeling go away. That once again, the hot girl hasn’t made you happy.

You’re stuck at an emotional dead end, and to anyone who’s been there, it’s blindingly obvious.

*99% of techniques are just hiding your emotional problems, fix the emotional problem and you’ll never have needed the technique in the first place – the techniques just replicate the behavior of someone who isn’t emotionally affected by women

*Read: fuck emotionally damaged women

*And you’ll learn this is making a move. And nothing else.

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WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.

IT WAS A sobering moment when I befriended guys who ‘got laid all the time.’ I had formed an idea of who I wanted to be in my mind, an idea that was based around how I wished to behave, the results I wanted to get, and the way people would react to me. This idea, to my mind, would prevent me from feeling what I felt at the time; loneliness, sadness, and shame.

Based on what I felt was lacking within me, this idea took root in the real world as a ‘player’. A guy who got all the girls, and was capable of getting the validation I emotionally needed at the time. For a long time, it was my ultimate fantasy.

Eventually, it came to be something that I outgrew. And a lot of (read: all) the things I learned along the way ended up on this blog and in my Complete Dating Course.(Which is 8-hours of video lessons and exercise goodness, alright, alright back to the article).

The truth was that like any fantasy when it came to my idea of the ‘player’ – reality had its ugly way with it.

THE PLAYER

I was sat in a hostel in South East Asia, talking with a guy who had an exceptional ability with women. When we went out, he’d almost always bring one home. He’d talk to them in bars, the club, the street, everywhere. When I asked him about his life, he always had stories littered with women. In fact, it seemed his stories never ran out. He’d experienced everything.

But despite this, something always seemed off.

Halfway through his latest story, probably about some South American threesome, or that stripper he took home, I asked him if he’d ever had a long-term relationship. He said he had, then continued on with a story, probably about an air hostess. He was smiling and happy, but his body language screamed at me that he had avoided the question. So later I asked him again.

And I noticed a pattern.

When he talked about his Ex, it was stories about how she wasn’t over him, how whenever he went home she would jump at the chance to make herself available, how he felt sorry for her and sorry for the guy she was with. When he talked about his Ex, he made a point of illustrating how she knew she had lost out, because, clearly, he was such a great guy.

It was a pattern of details, of attention; where he always seemed to find a way to illustrate how desirable he was, and how hopeless women were without him. And it didn’t just pervade the stories of his ex, I came to realize it occurred in every story he told and everything he did.

It was one of those points in a conversation where the connection between you breaks, and you realize, despite the apparent similarities, that this is someone who is different to you on a fundamental level. He needed me to know his Ex regretted losing him. He needed girls to want to sleep with him and he needed me to know girls wanted to sleep with him. Because, at the base of it all, he wasn’t talking to me, he was talking to himself. He needed all these things.

He was consumed by his need for validation.

THE NEED FOR EMOTIONAL VALIDATION

Despite the attention he got, the lifestyle he had, and the confidence he walked around with – there was something oddly hollow about him, something pitiable. I saw in him everything external that I wanted, but at the same time, nothing that I wanted internally. He was a man at once propelled by his confidence and ability, whilst at the same time, stunted by his malformed emotional needs, which he constantly had to placate with validation. Inside, he was just as needy as I was when I had started. He was just as needy as a guy who couldn’t get laid.*

Befriending guys like this, I eventually became disillusioned with my fantasy. The reality wasn’t a life I wanted, and it was a life that seemed to trap a lot of men. No ‘player’ seemed to have made it out the other side. Far from being immune to the pains that had driven me to seek validation from women, these men had been consumed by it. But what’s worse is that whilst they got laid all the time, they never, ever got the kind of girl who was impressive in her own right (confident, self-assured, and with her shit together). Instead, they had just become really good at gaming emotionally needy women. Because they were so emotionally stunted, all they could attract were emotionally stunted women.*

Both of them, locked in some need for validation from one another.

Right before my eyes, the James Bond fantasy became unmasked like some Scooby Doo episode as the babyish, emotionally immature fantasy that it always was. It turned out to be a life I didn’t want; and more importantly, a weak man that I never wanted to become.

THE REALITY OF MOST ‘PLAYERS’

A lot of guys find it hard to move beyond this need for validation. Hell, I still do too, even though I actively try to avoid it. The truth though, is that this lifestyle, without exception, has appeared in my life as something entirely without merit. Aside from a basic ability to confront anxiety, this lifestyle is usually an indication of an innate inability to confront something about oneself.

This, of course, is not to say that being promiscuous is bad. It is only to say that your attachment to the idea, and any attachment to the idea you see in others – is almost always a bad sign. A sign that you or they are emotionally stuck, and going to stagnate.

When we let go of the hunger for validation, we invite into our lives a quality of emotional living that rewards us with enriched opportunities from life. If we truly value our development over our need for validation, then the outcome we invite is that we live lives that are in a constant state of growth. Instead of feeling we need to be someone, we organically become someone.

Instead of telling people stories to enhance our ego, we tell people stories that add something to their lives. Instead of learning how to attract a certain kind of woman, we naturally attract the kind of woman who is right for us.*

With the rise of online dating, the shallowness of relationships has never been higher. Any guy with decent photos and a lick of confidence can become a ‘player’. But in becoming this player, he inadvertently confines himself within a sphere of emotional growth. It’s never been easier to get validation, but it’s validation that we should be wary of. Because looking outside yourself for fulfillment, in itself, stops you as soon as you get it.

Instead of aspiring to become another fantasy, hold your emotional richness as a benchmark for your own achievement. Look to overcome your fear, enhance your happiness, expand your comfort zone and diversify your identity. Instead of becoming a fantasy that exists to get you validation from women, become a fantasy that exists to make your life more fulfilling.

Because when you do, the women will come, and instead of being limited by it, you’ll be all the better for it.

—

*I still see this same guy posting pathetic and ill-veiled updates on Facebook talking about how he’s newly single and ready to go wild. As if anyone cares and it isn’t blindingly obvious this is just to make his Ex jealous.

*If this is something you’re into, go for it. Personally, I’ve always found it unfulfilling, boring, and not much of a rewarding challenge.

*Unsurprisingly, the kind of woman who could lock us down.

WANT A BETTER DATING LIFE?

Yeah, I know. You’ve read enough. But this is important. I made a dating course. Like, a really big dating course.

It’s over 8 hours of video content, 30 lessons, and over 80 exercises. It covers everything you need to know from making yourself more attractive, building sexual confidence, having great dates, and finding the right women for you.

It’s based on years of experience, a library’s worth of scientific research, and just the right amount of common sense. So stop listening to me and check it out for yourself.